[joemi]

Who do you think feels the effect of fraud/theft at retail stores? The "rich" owners feel a little of it, sure, but they have a proven strategy for keeping their profits up by reducing costs: fire employees and make those who remain do more work for the same pay. So you think this is "not actually a bad thing" because you're screwing over <insert big company here> but really you're just screwing over the workers.

[squibonpig]

That's not true. If any company loses revenue is has a lot of places to dump that loss. One is shrinking profit margins, another is raising prices, and another is lowering operating costs like labor, but also pulling lower-margin items off shelves and all other manner of cost cutting.

Let's oversimplify dramatically and say that every single lost dollar is paid through cutting the workforce. You're ignoring the fact that people benefit from the theft: those who need food and are able to steal it rather than going hungry. How do you know that feeding those people is worth less than employing the workers lost to their theft?

[joemi]

I'm not quite sure I follow your question. Are you asking how do I know that someone who loses their job needed their job to afford groceries? If so, I guess I felt it was a safe assumption that the people working at grocery stores are not financially independent.

[squibonpig]

No not my question. Sorry if it was unclear. I'm trying to understand how you're thinking about this. The question is "are there numbers x and y for which it's good that x number of people who would otherwise go hungry eat food even though it costs y number of people their job"